Call of Duty: Vanguard's standout mission shows a different side to Stalingrad | PC Gamer - redmonprecalf

Telephone of Duty: Vanguard's standout mission shows a polar side to Stalingrad

Call of Duty Vanguard's Stalingrad level

(Image citation: Activision)

I'm about midway through the campaign in Call of Duty: Vanguard, and so far it's been a well-made but unadventurous foray through with the various theatres of Mankind Warfare II. But incomparable mission has stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Titled Stalingrad Summer, it sees you toy as Russian sniper Polina Petrova in a very different bring on World War II's bloodiest battle.

Stalingrad Summer doesn't lead off with an icy carrefour of the River Volga River, or a cliff-hanging assault on Pavlov's House. Instead, it kicks off with a cupful of coffee, quite an possibly the best-looking cup of coffee I've ever seen in a videogame. Stalingrad Summer opens in the apartment of Polina's father, where they are united for a quick brewage by Polina's brother before she heads off to her deployment in the Red Army's medical corps.

The atmosphere is genial and tame, as if the Wehrmacht were on the other side of the world rather than a few miles on the far side the urban center's outskirts. The people of Stalingrad are confident in the Red Army's ability to fend off any attack, and so life carries on almost As normal. We get a better sense of that normality as Polina leaves the apartment, stepping outside to see the brightly coloured facades of the city buildings illuminated by the sun. Women hang out their washing to alcoholic in tenement corridors, piece a man futilely tries to push a bright coloured sofa leading a flight of stairs.

As someone who's only seen Stalingrad portrayed as a grey and junk-strewn field, it's striking to visualise the metropolis lent so much colour, to get a coup d'oeil of (nearly) unremarkable civilian life before the battle that turned the tide in the war. I've no idea how authentic Vanguard's portrayal of urban living in 1940s Russia is—I reckon it comes with a heavy dollop of artistic license. But the fact the game portrays the Russian the great unwashe as people, given voices and characteristic personalities rather than treating them as carom fodder for the Red Army's war machine, is significant per se.

The game portrays the Russian people as people, given voices and distinctive personalities sort o than treating them as cannon fodder for the Red Army's military machine

This representation doesn't feel like sass service either. For what little sort time they have, Polina's father and brother are sympathetic, empathetically drawn characters. And while IT's clear what the mission's final destination is from the moment the coffee is poured, Stalingrad Summer doesn't survive straight for the jugular as earlier games in the series may have cooked.

Rather, Stalingrad Summer takes its time tearing downwardly that which IT has built. Things begin looking less rosy the moment Polina leaves the courtyard in battlefront of her apartment. As she scrambles across the rooftops to get to her deployment, the pleasures of civil life slow fall away, replaced with disconcerting military order. We find out columns of tanks snarling up the roadstead, elaborate fortifications being improved from sandbags, and lines of military tents that stretch for hundreds of yards done Stalingrad's central square.

It's clear the engagement the Ruby-red Army is preparing for is much more world-shattering that IT seemed while sat at the coffee table, and the reality of what's to fall begins to slump in. Yet when the fireworks finally flare, it however comes as a ball over. As Polina arrives at her deployment, Vanguard gives you a abbreviated warning of the impending assault in the form of two flowing silhouettes in the sky, and then all perdition breaks friable.

I won't go into detail most what happens in the last mentioned partially of Stalingrad Summertime, but the moments after the Nazi assault begins are easily the most prominent and affecting moments in the campaign thusly far, as the life history Polina has known is ripped away in a smattering of seconds. The mission that follows is a standard Address of Duty affair, but the time arrogated to build up both Stalingrad as a place and the people surrounding Polina lends an urgency and emotive drive to your actions that the campaign's Sir Thomas More generic objectives elsewhere do non. It actually highlights the cost paid by the city connected the Volga better than a whole lot of separate fictitious portrayals around the combat.

It's been a patc since Call of Duty made me care almost the conflict it portrays, only Stalingrad Summertime is a genuinely compelling bit of World War Two drama. Indeed, part of me wishes the integral campaign focussed on Polina and her home, rather than bouncing around totally over the place as is Call of Duty's wont. In whatsoever case, I'll be intellection about that cup of coffee for much time to come, and not just because it looked genuinely delicious.